Keynote Address by Nnimmo Bassey, Executive Director of HOMEF, at the National Symposium on GMOs held on Monday, September 1, 2025

According to a popular adage, “when solving a problem, dig at the roots instead of just hacking at the leaves”. The challenge of food insecurity in Nigeria/Africa requires a deliberate pause and critical thinking about the factors that have created it and a concerted effort at addressing them. Overlooking the root causes of food insecurity (including farmer-herder clashes, banditry), poor support for local farmers, poverty, inequality, inflation, climate change and others shows the lack of readiness to solve the problem.

The gates for the entry of GMOs into Nigeria were flung open in 2015 with the enactment of the National Biosafety Management Agency (NBMA) Act. This act was further expanded in 2019 to allow for gene editing and synthetic biology. Sadly, the Biosafety Act was preceded by the creation of the National Biotechnology Development Agency (NABDA), an agency created to promote modern biotechnology. It was later christened National Biotechnology Research and Development Agency (NBRDA).

To be clear, this agency was established at a time there was no biosafety law in the country. The cart was clearly put before the horse, and this seriously injured any effort to regulate the sector and ensure biosafety in the country. This is particularly so because the promotion agency has a deep embryonic connection with the agency that ought to regulate it. This warped governmental approach has made it impossible for policy makers to see biosafety as an existential issue.

These two agencies of government cannot be excused for seeing themselves as infallible and even as being the government itself. They may be a part of government, but they are not the government. They falsely see GMOs as a one size fits all solution, virtually forget other areas of modern biotechnology and set their eyes only on gutting our agricultural and food  systems.

Solutions such as the genetic engineering of plants/animals do not address these root causes, and we should be worried that there is such an adamant push to entrench them in our food systems by the producers and their allies in government. There is obviously an open conspiracy to counter our best interests while locking in colonial controls over our agricultural and food systems.

GMOs are promoted in Nigeria on the premise of addressing food insecurity. However, after almost three decades since their introduction in the world, they have not eradicated or reduced hunger. Rather, they lock in the system that promotes hunger by degrading soils and poor harvests (case of Nigerian cotton farmers in 2024), reducing biodiversity, disregarding the knowledge of local food producers, and concentrating power in the hands of a few market players. 

GMOs ride on the wave of global fetishisation of technology, by which technology is considered a silver bullet. Besides the generally poor regulatory frameworks, GMOs directly impact on human as well as socio-economic rights of our peoples. The complex threats, including environmental degradation and loss of our food heritage, make it expedient that we examine the push for GMOs on the continent more critically. We must debunk the notion that resisting GMOs is akin to opposing science or technology. Rejecting GMOs is also not a matter of fear, except the fear of being colonized with its attendant exploitation and humiliation.

It is important to stress that GMOs represent a paradigm shift in agriculture; they are not just an option or solution. We must think beyond the mythical temporary relief that is imagined or promised and consider what long term impacts they portend. GMOs are plants, animals, or microorganisms that have undergone fundamental changes at the cellular level and can no longer be considered natural.

Most of them are engineered to withstand dangerous herbicides which kill other organisms except the engineered ones. Other crops are genetically engineered to act as pesticides aimed ostensibly to kill identified pests that would otherwise attack the crop or seeds. Examples include Bt Cotton and Bt Cowpea or beans approved for commercial planting and consumption in Nigeria.

GMOs represent the subversion of Africa’s food systems, which was intentionally constructed through the colonisation of thought – a phenomenon concretised through persistent coloniality of knowledge and power. You may wonder why anyone would subvert another’s food system. The reasons for this are many. The colonizers think and act in their own interests. This subversion covers every area of production and ensures that labour is not invested for meeting local needs while expanding and consolidating labour to meet the needs of the colonizers.

By emphasising a cash economy, for instance, farmers are forced to neglect their own nutritional needs, and are derided as subsistence farmers, and are made to offer their labour in exchange for meager wages. When the exploiting colonisers are kind, they turn the farmers into mere out growers who own nothing, are given seeds to cultivate and are thereafter given a fraction of the harvests. The colonial powers scored double on this count by introducing slavish plantation agriculture which grabs lands, displaces communities and offers locals menial jobs as farm hands or guards. 

Colonial agriculture thrived not only by producing crops for export, but it also benefited from altering the appetites of the colonised. These changes did not happen only through advertisements; the indigenous foods were denigrated as uncivilised and sometimes simply forgotten due to a chronic absence of the crops or ingredients for preparing the foods. Today, the erosion of varieties is exacerbated by many related factors, including genetic manipulations, hybridisation of crop varieties, prevalence of junk foods and hostile seed laws.

Our farmers saved seeds are falsely deemed inefficient, whereas these seeds are indigenous and have the natural ability to adapt and thrive in prevailing circumstances in which they are grown. It must never be forgotten that our farmers have selected and preserved seeds, crops, and animal varieties over the centuries. They have kept a stock of varieties that both provide food and meet our medicinal, cultural and other needs. They kept the norms that preserved biodiversity. They practiced rotational farming, mixed cropping, strategic pastoralism, and seasonal fishing. They understood the rhythms of nature and maintained the natural equilibrium by being respectful of the Earth.

These practices are being threatened by the genetic modification of seeds, particularly those that make up our staple foods. Core concerns about the control of seeds are being ignored by many, but these should be confronted head-on, and now is the time to do so. Our farmers will be forced to depend on corporate seed entities for seeds, as the productivity of GM seeds typically degrades after the first planting. Over time, we risk losing our genetic diversity and control of our seeds to these foreign entities who are merely after profits, no matter the cost to human life or the environment.

Responsible use of technology in agriculture requires that we keep careful watch on their effect on human and environmental health. We also need to consider the fact that technologies that promote monoculture and erode our biodiversity are not sustain-able and must be avoided in a world that is almost at the brink of ecological collapse. We do not need GMOs to be able to produce enough food for our population.

GMOs have not led to an increase of food production since their introduction. In 2025, it was reported that Tanzania achieved food sufficiency by 128% without GMOs and by increasing support for their local farmers and by promoting organic food production. Recent studies have revealed that more than 40% of food produced in Nigeria goes to waste due to lack of proper processing and storage facilities. This needs to be addressed.

We must decolonise our agricultural system. The ways to achieve this include the preservation of crop and animal varieties, rebuilding our food systems, thereby, recovering our culture. A decolonized agriculture invests in support systems for farmers, including by providing extension services and providing/upgrading rural infrastructure. It also means preserving local varieties, ensuring that farmers have access to land and, funding research institutions to build a knowledge base on healthy soils and resilient indigenous crops.

It would also mean putting farmers on the driving seat of agricultural policy, elevating and prioritizing the precautionary principle in biosafety issues, and outlawing harmful herbicides and pesticides. It would again mean placing a swift moratorium on all types of agricultural modern biotechnology as this is a key means of eroding species varieties besides threatening outright extinctions.

Nigeria is at a critical point where we must decide on the way forward for food sovereignty. This is not just another symposium. It is a space where we must exert our rights, and demand for the liberation of our food system.